26. The Contact
The young girl behind the cash register kindly smiles.
“Good morning, Uncle. Uncle is here early for your breakfast as usual on Saturdays. But where is your granddaughter? I see uncle has bought only one breakfast this morning.”
Professor Johan de Ridder smiles back. He has seen her many times before and noticed her nametag: Jasmine. “Floret, you always smile so beautifully. I dropped Martie at her school before you opened. She had porridge and has a lunch box for lunch because she will be busy the whole day at school. They are practicing for a concert. She has a role in a play and she is going to perform a piano solo in the concert.”
“Goodness, she is not only beautiful but talented as well, Uncle.”
Johan smiles proudly. “Floret, you keep on calling me ‘uncle’. I am going to call you ‘aunty’ if you persist.”
Jasmine blushes and looks to an attractive, sturdy, middle-aged man next to Johan waiting to be served as if she wants him to support her while she explains. “I only want to show respect, Uncle.”
Johan bites back. “Okay then, Aunty Floret, I understand aunty …”
The stranger winks. “Jasmine, just call him by his title: ‘professor’.”
Jasmine is dismayed. “Wow, I didn’t know you are a professor, sorry Uncle Professor.”
Johan frowns. “Oh no, Aunty Floret, this is even worse. You are not a student of mine.”
Surprised Johan looks at the stranger. Who is this man? He never forgets a face, but this man is a total stranger. Perturbed he takes the bag of groceries that the girl hands over to him. “Goodbye, see you later, Aunty Floret.”
He briskly walks out of the shop but at the entrance, someone pulls on his sleeve and he looks right into the eyes of the stranger that revealed his title. “Professor Johan de Ridder, you left your receipt at the counter.”
He holds a different receipt out and Johan sees something has been written at the back of the receipt. With questions in his eyes, he looks at the man that only nods encouraging him to take it.
“Thanks.” He quickly takes it and hurriedly walks out of the shop and gets into his Toyota Camry and anxiously reads the message.
Oh no, damn! Not again! ‘They are here for you, Professor. You are being followed and monitored. Discard this message and talk to no one. Meet me at your favorite spot where you and Martie regularly picnic in Settler’s Park. I am your only hope. Quick, before it is too late!’
~*~*~
Johan is near the picnic cove between the plants just before the footpath turns and climbs steeply to the upper part of Settler’s Park. This is the place where he and Martie every fair weather Saturday morning picnic under a giant tree. There is a cement table on which they play chess with the pleasing sounds of birds in their ears. He wonders how the man knows this. Anxiety gnaws in his guts because he can easily walk into a trap! He thinks back to the episode in the SPAR. The man spoke English with an Afrikaans accent and he has an open, honest face. Definitely not a foreigner, but what if his first impression is wrong? What if this man is a mercenary that has been hired by the same people that destroyed his life many years ago? Those devils probably tracked him down after all these years. However, he is compelled to only go forward and meet the man! He must just cling to the hope that someone can help him!
Johan hears a radio playing when he is nearing the cove. He feels a little more at ease when he hears it is Radio Sonder Grense a local Afrikaans station. He is now entering the cove and sees the man sitting at the picnic table with a portable radio and his laptop in front of him. The man puts his finger in front of his lips warning Johan not to say anything. He rises and standing in front of Johan takes out his smartphone and points at it and then at Johan. Johan realizes the man wants his smartphone and he hands it over.
The man takes his smartphone and simply puts it down on the grass and gestures for Johan to follow him. They sit down at the table and the man turns the radio louder. He takes a box out of his inner pocket, puts it down between them and then plugs two earphones with microphones into the box and hands one over to Johan to put on while he puts on the other one.
His voice suddenly comes loud and clear in Johan’s ears while the man is turning a knob to regulate the volume. “Can you hear me, Professor?”
“I hear you. What is going on? Who are you?”
“I am Nico de Jager, a member of an international task team that investigates some people that arrived here in Port Elizabeth and we suspect they are planning to kidnap you because twelve years ago you evaded them. Our only ace is that they don’t know about us at this stage. They mostly use your smartphone to follow you and eavesdrop. They are extremely professional and technologically very well equipped. Do not alter your usual routines and talk to no one about it. Up to now, we could not track them down, we only know of them. It is vitally important that they don’t get suspicious and know about us. That is why we have to meet here in isolation in the park and talk with the aid of this box. In this manner, we can talk out of sight and hear each other while the radio prevents them from amplifying our conversation and eavesdrop. I must thank you for your cooperation. It was a wise decision to come.
“Professor, Interpol realized that pioneer scientists and their nearest of kin have disappeared over the past twenty years and brought together a special task force to investigate this phenomenon. We have, in the meantime, developed face identification technology to such a stage that we installed monitors at all the international customs to be on the watch out for them. To our surprise, a group of tourists from India landed in PE and quite a few of them were those vanished scientists with new identities. Unluckily they disappeared immediately before we could make contact with any of them.
“We then tried to find out why they were in PE, we went through the list of the names of scientists that have disappeared and find you and your family also went missing but that you have escaped in an inexplicable way and is now lecturing at the University of PE as a professor in philosophy. However, you were a pioneering virologist when you disappeared? You disappeared when you travelled to India with your family. What are these people’s plans? What happened to you twelve years ago? Where are your wife, son and daughter in law? They are still missing.”
Despondently Johan shakes his head and sighs deeply and thinks in silence before, eventually, he answers. “Who do you know has gone missing, Nico?”
Nico opens his laptop and slides it in front of Johan. “There, Professor. Go through the list. Maybe you will recognize some of them.”
Johan goes through the profiles slowly and a very interesting field of knowledge opens before his eyes: virology, nanotechnology, genetics, engineering. He finds the names of virologists he had been working with and recognizes many other scientists. He slides the laptop back to Nico.
He looks him straight in the eyes. “Nico, I was engaged in experiments during my scientific investigation for a German company. Usually, when you want to transfer the characteristics of a specific virus to a virus that belongs to another genetic family, it fails. Our research was looking for methods to overcome this problem in the laboratory.
“One morning I arrived at work and went through the previous day’s results and I discovered a technique whereby any virus can be manipulated to be contagious via the air, doesn’t matter which family it belongs to. I thus discovered a method that can make any virus as contagious as any flu virus. Unluckily, I was not alone at that moment. Elize Ezkariot and I were colleagues in this project. We were good friends and in my elation, I shared the news with her. Later, after work, we even celebrated it in a bar. This was ground-breaking stuff.
“Later that evening in my bed, I had this weird nightmare. In my dream, an organization approached me and bought the knowledge from me. Overnight I became a multi-billionaire and bought an island. But one day when I visited the mainland by boat, I found desolate cities and towns full of corpses. The organization that bought my knowledge developed a biological weapon that spread so rapidly that it annihilated mankind.
“I couldn’t sleep any further and went back and destroyed all threads of evidence of my discovery. The next day Elize was furious and after a fierce quarrel, she reported me. I was guilty of a breach of contract and was forced to resign and then I came back to South Africa to decide on my way forward. The German company reported me to the scientific council and there was slim hope that I could get a contract to go on with my scientific research as a virologist.
“Then out of the blue, a proposition from India arrived that offered me twelve times my usual salary for a scientific research project. They proposed that I took my whole family with me. They would cover the travel expenses and even arrange for the most luxurious holiday in five-star hotels for two weeks whether I accept their proposal or not. The interview for the project would be at the end of our holiday and we could then together decide if I accept or not.
“In any case, I was in dire straits with no prospect of finding work. I felt guilty towards my wife, my son and daughter in law because of the stress they endured. The company then asked me to supply them with our certified IDs and passport photos and promised their travel agency would arrange everything. We were mildly surprised when our passports, visas and return flight tickets arrived by post a little later, everything paid for, and they even deposited a huge sum in my bank account for pocket money. I went to the Department of Home Affairs and they checked all the documents and found it in order. My wife, my son and his wife, with their year old baby, Martie, and I flew to India where we had the most enjoyable holiday.”